Fine Homebuilding: Imagine if your computer could guide you to the smartphone you lost under a couch cushion. Wouldn't if be nice if your washing machine could read the a tag on your blouse and then wash it accordingly? What if the doggie door recognized your dog and only opened for him?
6 comments:
RFID technology is fantastic. Having experience in a retail store where we used RFID chips inside of our price tags to track each individual clothing item until was removed from the system at the time of purchase, I can see a million possibilities for this to be implemented. The article didn't bring up that these are used often in retail for theft prevention, which is probably why they may be misunderstanding a bit about how powerful they are in reality. The RFID tags we used were incredibly low range, and would only be able to be used within in the store. If the clothing item was outside of the store, we wouldn't be able to get some kind of GPS-provided address to track down the item. Thus, I think if the chips were low range, like the ones used in retail, there wouldn't need to be any concerns in terms of safety.
My favorite use listed here is the washer knowing how to wash your clothes. I don't honestly believe that there are a lot of ways we as humans are going to be able to avoid being tracked. We use twitter and facebook and foursquare. Everything we do every day points toward the fact that we are always checking in to let people know where we are. The scary thing about this is that we wouldn't be choosing it this time and we could be tracked without ever asking for it. I wonder how long it will be until parents are putting RFID chips in their teenagers "for their own good".
The other neat thing RFID tags are being used for is festivals. At some festivals, these wristbands are given instead of paper tickets that allow you to enter and exit festival grounds each day. Coldplay uses these to create a lightshow with their audience. When you are in the general area of one of the stages at Bonnaroo, it checks you in. This allows the festival as an organization to improve their event for the next year.
I dont think that our generation will catch onto the technology in Home-life changing way quite like the generation currently being born will, in the same fashion that older generations did not grow up with the internet. The technology seems great and promising, and could most defiantly change home-life significantly. But I dont think it will happen for a while.
As to its applications for theater, I think they are numerous and useful. Just like with any business we could most defiantly use computerized organization and tracking. And if the technology could be used in an In-The-Space triangulation fashion, certain parts of automated scenery or lighting could get a lot cheaper.
This is the future I dream of. Funny they didn't mention the Internet of Things as that is what they are describing but it does not really matter what you call it besides "the future." I think the biggest thing holding us back at this point is peoples fear of being tracked all the time, or loss of privacy. It is an entirely reasonable fear, I just don't care. I would totally trade my privacy (which I'm pretty sure is already gone because all of my hardware is Apple) to live in a Jetsons home. Its not like the anyone is going to use the information to stalk me. They are probably just going to be looking through my life trying to target advertisements to me. And honestly I would rather see ads for things I want, then things I don't.
I think though that Brennan is onto something, in classes we have talked about efficient ways to track tools and materials and I think that RFID is a great solution for tracking tools or Lighting equipment. Each unit could be tagged and transmitters could be placed at doorways in order to keep track of where the units go. Down to which meat rack the Fixture is stored on. Tod has done an impressive job organizing and his light fixtures but anyone will gladly point out how infuriating it is track down each barrel for each instrument. Where as having a database that has an accurate accounting of where each unit is. For the same with a tool room you could easily program a camera to snap a picture of whom is using the tool and when it is returned. Especially in an establishment like ours where students frequently like to borrow tools they could easily be borrowed for use outside of the shop and we in the shop could easily know exactly where it went to.
Is RFID technology in my future? RFID technology is already here. RFID technology is in my wallet (a few times), in my phone (ish), on my keys, in my computer, on my Arduino, and almost anywhere else that a lot of technology is grouped together.
On stage, RFID technology is already being used for costume and properties management, in overhead rigging components (Crosby installs RFID into a variety of their rigging devices), Many power tool manufacturers have installed RFID into their tools (to find drills stuck behind installed drywall, which I’m sure usually isn’t worth retrieving), and even in ticketing and sales departments.
It was only a matter of time before RFID made it into the homes. And surprise, it’s happening.
I guess the only concern I have with RFID technology is habit-tracking. I don’t neccesarily want my grocery store habits being sold to advertisers or retail outlets. I don’t want a list of every grocery I’ve every bough to be available to anybody. Most importantly, I don’t think I want my refrigerator to be telling me what to do. We’ve already seen what happens when toasters get intelligent….
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